Toska
by CaptainNinapants
Summary: Peggy was tired and emotionally beaten when Howard calls her to tell her he might have invented time travel. Of course, it's an offer too good to believe.


Kay, so I wrote some saddish fanfic. It's published on my deviantart page as well, and is for a contest.

"No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody or something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom." -Vladmir Nobokov

* * *

"Hey Peggy, I have something I need to show you." Howard revealed one night over the phone.

When the phone rang, Peggy assumed that it had to be Stark, only because he was indecent enough to call at all hours of the night. She couldn't help but wonder, though, how he knew that she would be awake. Maybe one of her coworkers had revealed that she hadn't been sleeping well, or at all, recently.

On a very basic and purely emotional level, Peggy felt rather raw and exposed. All this action concerning Leviathan and Stark had really run her down, and now she needed some time to build herself back up from the bottom. Not that she would get caught admitting it. So maybe Howard was the same as her in regards to the need to remember his value, and to not let himself get caught up and letting himself stretch too thin. Or maybe Peggy hoped that she had more of a friend in Howard than she thought she might.

"Now?" She asked, stifling a yawn as a wave of exhaustion hit her. Stretching the phone cord, she sat down on the nearest couch.

"Well, if you want, but I think tomorrow would be a better time for it. But I just had to phone you up as soon as I figured it out." He sounded excited, probably bouncing up and down with his new invention, idea or whatever new contrived nonsense he pulled from thin air. "I think I just created time travel."

At first Peggy felt excited, but that's how anyone would respond when they're told that time travel was a tangible possibility. But as the news settled, she began to criticize the enjoyable news. Time travelling wasn't something to take lightly, and if it truly was possible then Stark shouldn't be telling her. For all Peggy knew, her work could have gotten into her new home and tapped the phone wire. They would have been able to get in, and she knew that even though she had proved herself to be truthful, most at the SSR still regarded her with esteem.

"That's great, Howard, it really is. I just-" She started, "I just don't really see any point to it. The time travel, I mean."

"We could go back and save Steve. You're not the only one who misses him, you know." He spoke softly, and it always impressed Peggy just how emotive Stark was once you got to know him. There was depth underneath that appearance as a Casanova.

"I know, but we need to move on, Howard. I don't think that Steve would want us to mope around." Peggy said, trying to get comfortable on the couch. It was tough for her to admit that maybe it was time to create progress instead of just waiting for a miracle to happen. For days she had convinced herself that she wasn't giving up on Steve, rather Peggy was going to cherish her life knowing that Steve had made it a better place.

"I'm not going to give up until we've given it our best shot. Now that I have this, it would mean a lot to me if you would come help me try it out, Pegs. I can't think of anyone better than Captain America's best girl."

"Howard, I know you know this means a lot to me, but we just can't go back into time. There's got to be planning and we have to tell someone else, and well there's just too much responsibility for you to handle." Peggy was beginning to get tired of constantly being the reasonable one, even though her heart seemed to be leaping at the chance to save Steve.

"I think we could just do it without telling anyone. I mean, there's no harm in a little time travel." She was sure that Howard was shrugging off the stressors of time travel like he did most things in his life, but such a careless sentence angered her. How could a scientist, especially one as good as Howard, ignore the potential dangers.

"Haven't you heard of the butterfly effect? Where if we go back in time, we could alter the future by changing one little thing? Just imagine the world, for a moment, where Captain America survived the war. So much would be different, especially how the war ended. We just can't hop back for a quick jaunt, Howard."

"I wish you could hear yourself talk, Pegs." Howard said after a brief silence.

"I wish you would listen."

Once again the phone line went silent as Howard thought of something to say to Peggy's rather poignant allegation.

"We could write letters." Howard suggested with a hopeful voice. Peggy shifted on the couch, sitting straight up and sticking her legs out, resting them on the coffee table. "I mean, if we don't want to mess up the world we can't put names or war secrets or anything like that, but we could write some letters, maybe send some pictures."

"That sounds a lot better than sending someone back in time." Peggy felt obliged to admit before suppressing yet another yawn.

"So I'll see you in the morning with your letter, then. 10 o'clock?"

"See you then, Howard. Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Peggy." Howard said before the phone clicked and the line went dead. Peggy sat on the couch for a moment, gathering her thoughts, before getting up and putting the phone back in it's cradle.

The residence that Stark had so graciously let Angie and Peggy stay in was so large compared to the Griffith house, and so much quieter. Peggy's footsteps echoed off the hardwood floors, and she was thankful she had taken off her slippery stockings. She was quite tired, only realizing the true extent of her fatigue when she was walking the short distance between the couch and her room.

Instead of working on the letter, Peggy slid between the cool silk sheets of her bed and laid awake thinking about what she would possibly say to Steve. She had the ability to put just about anything out there in the vain hopes that Steve would read it. But nothing was coming to her mind, and so Peggy found herself counting the seconds between Angie's soft snores she could hear through the walls. Eventually she drifted off into a much needed slumber.

Peggy woke again early in the morning and decided that she would get ready to go visit Howard. While preparing breakfast in the kitchen, something that she found surprisingly relaxing. Now that she had a kitchen available, she found herself cooking a lot more in the morning. As the food was finishing up, Peggy went back to her bedroom to get a pen and some paper.

Dishing up a plate for herself and putting the leftovers in the oven to keep them warm for Angie, Peggy sat at the table with the paper and pen in front of her. It's stark blankness contrasted against the dark wood of the table, and Peggy frowned at it. How did she decide what she would send into space? Instead, Peggy focused on eating her food before it got cold, thinking only of what she could write in the letter.

She could tell Steve whatever she wanted with the anonymity of the future, and now was her chance. If Peggy wanted, she could write a letter full of admiration for Steve. Maybe finally say the words that she never spoke because she never thought that they were appropriate to say aloud. That kiss that they shared was as close as she ever seemed to get to the topic. But the more Peggy thought about her time working beside Steve, it felt like it was obvious by just how they acted around each other that there was a mutual admiration.

Something about the ability to finally get to throw those words into time held such an allure to her, though. Sure, Steve wouldn't get to reply, and there was no guarantee that those cherished words would make it to Steve. But Peggy had faith in Howard and the idea that maybe their love was strong enough to transcend the trouble of time and space.

Setting aside her now empty plate, Peggy pulled the paper closer to her and carefully wrote down her thoughts.

" _Dear Steve,_

 _I am writing this in the hopes that Stark's experimental science works, though what it does I'm not at liberty to discuss. That isn't the purpose of this letter, though._

 _I want you to know that I love you, and even if I never tell you that to your face, I need you to know that. You are the most honestly exceptional man I know, and I think that the world is a better place since you were here._

 _P.C."_

She finished the letter with her initials, thinking that was the smartest option and safer than having her full name. Peggy was, after all, rather important during the war and she didn't want a rather childish love letter to undermine those months of hard work and leave her looking silly.

After Angie woke up, Peggy called a car to Howard's lab, the letter she had written folded neatly in her pocket. Tony demonstrated his new toy, a blue cube that Peggy had only ever seen in photographs that were technically not meant for her eyes. He confessed that he wasn't exactly sure how it worked, but he believed that it had the ability to do exactly what he needed it to do.

"Where did you even find this cube?" Peggy found herself asking as Howard punched buttons on a wide panel.

"When we were up north for a while I found this energy signature, and I wasn't quite sure what it was until I ran some tests on it. Your SSR buddies weren't too enthused with me finding it, but they let me keep it here for safety purpose. There was a lot of trial and error, but I think I've got this all figured out. And if I don't, well that's a risk we're just going to have to be willing to take."

He punched a few more buttons before moving across the room to retrieve some sunglasses. He handed Peggy a pair and asked her to come stand behind the panel with him for her own safety.

"I really do hope this works." He murmured, pushing the lever up all the way. The lights in the room dimmed as the power helped the machine turn on.

A faint blue, a small screen like sheen would appeared in the metal ring that Tony had set up earlier, and Peggy's heart skipped a beat.

"So if this is set up right, we can send our artifacts back in time to the camp Steve was staying at, and hopefully they get intercepted in time." He said, turning and picking up his chosen photograph and sending it through the portal. Peggy followed his example, biting her lip and crossing her fingers, hoping and praying that Steve would see it.

The letter went through the blue sheen with less spectacle than Peggy would have expected. It was unsettling just how simple this payoff was, when it had been a week worth of stress on the shoulders of Howard.

With just one swift movement the entire purpose for that morning slipped through time and Peggy felt underwhelmed. She thanked Howard and went to the SSR offices to get a start on the paperwork that was surely piled up on her desk. It was time for her to at least try to move on from Steve, and even though she felt she wasn't living up to her true potential now, at least she had the SSR.

Work was boring and uneventful, seeing as they had just apprehended the Leviathan and now had all new red tape to cut before they could even pretend to make progress. Thankfully evil had stopped to gather it's thoughts and allowed the SSR to get caught up. She found herself wondering during an especially bland lull in the day whether her attempt to communicate with Steve had been successful..

The letter had been successfully sent through time and a little space, but it hadn't reached Steve. He had left the camp to go apprehend the Red Skull, and by the time the letter appeared he had been long gone. Any of the remaining staff on sight were too busy to notice. So the letter landed on the ground, discarded carelessly into the dirty snow. The white paper stood out against the dirty snow, words preserved by the cold.

Her love had never made it to the desired person. Instead it sat in the woods, unharmed and untouched, becoming cold and more and more irrelevant as time went on. Eventually the wind picked it up and blew it to sea, only for the words to become soggy and meaningless as the paper became mush. Soon there was nothing left of the letter but a few clumps of paper that became swept up by the current and sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

Peggy Carter had lost her love at sea twice, and she didn't know it happened. Instead, she kept slaving away at her menial work under the delusional pretense that Steve had gotten her words. No one could correct her in that, nor would Peggy let them.

It was her special closure, allowing herself to believe that her love seemed to die with Steve.


End file.
